2006 02 05 Meeting Notes

Meeting Notes 2006 02 06

Please visit our web page, Joey 8-toes N9LQ does a great job keeping it updated.
http://www.imarsflorida.com
PLEASE BE ALERT FOR CLUB MEETING ANNOUNCEMENTS IN ALL PAPERS

Hello all,

Our first meeting in the new meeting place went very well. We had 14 in attendance, as many as we usually had at the Fire Station so most had no problem finding the place.

Alan Williamson, the DeBary Volunteer Coordinator, was most welcoming and we all felt comfortable in the EOC.

Bud NØIA has set up a station in the EOC and we all had a chance to look that over. We will get more involved with that program in the future I'm sure.

We were very happy to see Grant Everly, N3CJJ, at the meeting. It's been a long time since we saw Grant and hope he enjoyed the meeting and will come back every Monday.

Hank N4JTO brought a trailer load of goodies and invited everyone to take whatever they wanted. Hank called me earlier in the week. He said he had a lot of stuff in his garage that he wanted to get rid of but hated to just throw it away. I got to thinking about that. I gave a lot of stuff away before moving down here from Virginia Beach. In spite of that I've got a big pile again. I remembered something I had heard on the Clark Howard show. I went looking for it and decided I could make an interesting presentation for the club. It took a few hours to put together some slides and talked for about 20 minutes (wasn't it?) about the FreeCycle movement (like ReCycle except FREE, get it?) I was surprised to learn that all of the local cities have a FreeCycle group except Orange City. Give em a try, their purpose is noble and it solves the problem of getting rid of something without adding it to the landfill. Here are the links:

http://www.freecycle.org/
DeBary: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/debaryfreecycle/
DeLand: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/DelandFLFreecycle/ Deltona: http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/deltonafreecycle/
Geneva: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/GenevaFreecycle/
Sanford: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SanfordFlFreecycle/
Seminole County: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SeminoleCountyFreecycle/

Russ W4ZIP presented us with the letter to Fire Station 34 he had composed. He even designed an IMARS letterhead that was very nice. He made the same mistake I did the first time I sent our meeting notice to all the newspapers, he reversed the numbers and called it Fire Station 43. Yesterday I received the corrected letter. Russ gave me the title Chairman. I guess that's good, we needed SOME title for purposes of the letter. I signed it in behalf of the club and got it in the mail today. I posted a copy of the letter along with pictures that Russ took of our first meeting. Here is the link to the photo album:

THE LINK STARTS HERE => http://www.photoworks.com/share/shareLanding.jsp?shareCode=A7058D1C027&cb=PW <= LINK ENDS HERE - IF YOU CAN'T CLICK ON THIS LINK THEN PLEASE CUT AND PASTE IT INTO THE ADDRESS LINE OF YOUR WEB BROWSER.

If anyone would like to prepare a presentation, either with PowerPoint or just a group of slides that can be shown using the Windows XP Slide and Fax Viewer, as I did with this FreeCycle presentation, please let me know. I'll bring the projector to the meeting and we will hook it up to your notebook computer. If you don't have a notebook computer but can burn a CD or put your presentation on a Jump/Thumb Drive, I'll bring my notebook too. Having this projector available opens up all sorts of possibilities for the members to create interesting presentations using what they have available or can get off of the internet as I did with this presentation. PLEASE THINK OF SOMETHING YOU CAN DO TO MAKE THE NEXT MEETING INTERESTING. The story of your life, some fiction, both ;-)

I just got the following from Bud NØIA:

Hi, Jerry-

I'll miss the Old Fart's Meeting Monday Feb 13th. We were just notified today that Dillon has been called to active duty at the Guide Dog place and must be there before noon Monday. Because of Hamcation this weekend - we can't take him until Monday AM!

The good news is that we'll get to play with his nine new puppies for a while - and take some pictures - maybe a video! I'll have those to share the following week.

My best to all.

73,

bud N0IA (His phone numbers which I will not publish here.)

Last but not least, I have to thank my XYL for sending the cookies. She was baking cookies on Sunday night. I swear I didn't say a word, she said “Why don't you take these to the meeting tomorrow!” Of course I took her up on the offer immediately. I knew that if I didn't I'd end up eating them ALL myself. Lord knows I don't need them. I think there were 4 left when I got home, I DID eat all of those.

I'm looking for a near recitation about reincarnation that I'll read if I can find it, be warned. Think of something to preempt THAT ;-)

73 / 88

Jerry KØJH

P.S. Somebody asked me how I get the slant zero in my call Ø. Hold the ALT key and press 0216 on the NUMBER PAD (with a notebook you have to hold the CTRL, ALT and SHIFT key all at once because there is no number pad.) You can also get cents ¢, umlauts Ä etc. You can do the same in Word by choosing INSERT > SYMBOL then selecting the symbol you want, but it's a lot easier using the ALT key and remembering the ASCII code for the symbol you want.)

SORRY ABOUT THE EXTRA UNDERLINING, THE 'U' OPTION HAS DISAPPEARED FROM THIS BLOG EDITOR. I'VE ALREADY LOST IT ALL ONCE AND AM AFRAID TO MESS WITH IT ANY MORE.